In a long-shadowed, sun-soaked Detroit, The Masonic Temple looked as sacred as its name suggests. All down the block, great mauve banners declared the venue’s centenarian status. In the waning light, the building was a kind of old master — a fitting place to see the legendary Portishead frontwoman Beth Gibbons.
Playing the techno-chanteuse of the 2000s, Gibbons brings a sensual melodrama to the beats she rides over. As a member of the three-piece electronic act Portishead, big-band orchestras are reduced to digital ephemera, sample-flipped under her keening voice. In her solo work, though, the trip-hopper has made a full turn to acoustic, entering the singer-songwriter world in 2002 with vivid lyrics and a trembling theremin. By the time of last year’s album, Lives Outgrown, her early-career melancholy had calcified into hard-earned wisdom. Gibbons’ lyrics have always been broad and darkly polemic, but after 20 years of love and loss, they ring like the truth. “The time’s never right when you’re losing a soul,” she intoned mournfully on “Burden of Life”; one imagines Gibbons looking off to something the listener can’t see, something long gone.
At The Masonic Temple, the crowd seemed eager to reclaim something long gone, too. The Lives Outgrown tour marks Gibbons’ first in 10 years — and a reunion for yesteryear’s cool kids. The crowd on this block of the Cass Avenue were a mix of casual and committed, repping merchandise that ran the gamut from Portishead T-shirts to vinyl copies of Henryk Górecki’s “Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs).” Gibbons’ show was a sit-down affair; general admission was crowded with black folding chairs. Tonight, the Temple would not have a pit.
Taking the place of opening act was Cass McCombs’ sweet, plucking guitar. The show’s intermission was heralded by a long, low therevox, humming like a human voice. As the show began, smoke clouded the cavernous Temple, and the dyed heads of milling concertgoers began to fade.
Rounds of applause heralded Gibbons and her band as they took the stage — but the band remained stoic. Breaking the silence, touring bandmate Eoin Rooney launched into a deft arpeggio on his guitar, low and arid. For the rest of the show, the band behind Gibbons remained carefully composed and multi-instrumental — each member would switch between tools, picking up snare drums, sequencers, cellos and clarinets. Lit from behind, the silhouettes of the band’s bodies and instruments projected onto the milling fog, creating a collage of shadows.
When asked what made her retake the stage, Gibbons simply answered, “People started dying.” Lives Outgrown represents a tuneful form of remembrance — and today, at the Masonic Temple, that collective remembrance began with the opening track of Lives Outgrown, “Tell Me Who You Are Today.”
Even this far into her career, eclectic song-scaping does not escape Gibbons’ compositions. Even on her acoustic cuts, there is still an echo of the trippy, glitchy and pseudo-mechanical. Gibbons’ voice, fraught by the years, suffused in near-whispers over the watery depth of the song. She lulls, “Tell me what you are to me,” as Rooney takes a cello’s bow to an electric guitar. These machine-made sounds keep keyboardist Jason Hazeley busy; to produce them, he tinkers with an assemblage of odds-and-ends instruments.
Gibbons may have outgrown her old life, but she still seems fond of her old music. This Masonic Temple show also featured songs off her previous album, 2002’s Out of Season. Dotted with references to wise trees, moon tides and melodies of life, Gibbons’ lyrics can feel a little new age on the album cut — but on “Mysteries,” a memorable track from that early-aughts blue period, the lyrics land soft and desperate. “I’ll be there anytime,” she repeats gently, closing out the song with a haunting glissando. As the ghostly, operatic wail filled the room, I could not be sure if it was a human voice or the sound of some stately, delicate machine.
In the song’s comedown, rapt applause engulfed the band. A woman screamed, “I love you, Beth!” — but Gibbons didn’t look back. Throughout the set, she had a habit of turning away from the crowd, paying attention to Hazeley’s keyboard chops instead. In these moments, watching her watching the band, you feel the futility of the audience. Touring, too, is a life she’s outgrown.
Closing out with a breathtaking rendition of the brassy “Tom the Model,” the band stepped offstage. In that moment, the show’s potential seemed infinite. It might be over — or Gibbons might launch into a second half. In the silence, a woman shrieked, “Play Dummy,” and the band conceded. Soon, Hazeley struck a few sparse, wobbling chords on the keyboard, and they lingered in the air like sunspots— a cue. When fans finally recognized the beloved Portishead track “Roads,” the sound of their clapping rattled the air.
On “Roads,” Beth clung to the mic like a wet leaf; behind her, the drumwork is as crisp as ever. Whether torch singer or soft crooner, Gibbons’ discography revisits a style that precedes her by some 50 years — but something essential is transfigured over time. From Portishead’s Dummy on, her music walks the tightrope between organic and simulation, the bespoke singer and her replicable sample. Over Portishead’s sonic palettes, which draw from spy thrillers and spaghetti westerns, Gibbons’ lovesick singing feels acutely like a performance — like a character she plays. Called back to the stage in remembrance, Gibbons’ reprisal of the Portishead catalogue feels more retrospective than introspective. Hurt gives way to artistry, and she performs “Roads” one more time because it is beautiful, not because it stings.
And so Portishead is what Gibbons and the band leave the Masonic Temple on. When the lights went up, Gibbons hung around and chatted quietly; she signed things and clasped people’s outstretched hands like she was Jesus. She was excited to be there, floating on the moment: running around on stage, sweet, giggling, breaking the gravitas of the preceding show.
For a moment, I shifted on my feet. I wondered whether I could push into the yearning crowd, get something of mine signed and clasp her hand back. I wonder if I should’ve held on. What I could’ve done to gratify the person I once was.
But I wasn’t this girl anymore. I didn’t need “Sand River” like I once did, though it is beautiful like an old friend, and still transports me to the Hudson River waterside. I got the sense, standing there, that Beth and I both were out of phase from the aura she’d created; that the songs were for the other people, flocked and waiting for her hand.
For a moment, the space between us was pregnable, and there was a time in my life when that mattered. But the trappings of celebrity is a life she has outgrown, and so have I.
So, this was only a moment. It passed, and I stood and watched the signing, speaking and hand-holding. After giving herself to the crowd, she skipped girlishly offstage, and all I could do was watch.
Daily Arts Writer Amina Cattaui can be reached at aminacat@umich.edu.
